Independent Study (by Sexghosts)
by CatandKaraForever
Summary: Need I say it again and again, this is not my work, merely helping out another author by posting to another site. This story belongs to the amazingly talented Sexghosts. Anyway, the summary: Kara isn't sure she's up to the task of satisfying a woman like Cat, so she turns to what she does best: research.


**Independent Study (by Sexghosts)**

 **Fandom: Supergirl  
Author: Sexghosts (Archive of Our Own author, this work is merely copied to get more publicity for them)**

 **Rating: M**

When Kara was in college, her journalism professors all had lovely things to say about her writing; how clear and well-thought-out her prose was, how passionately she felt about her subjects, and so on. But what earned her the most credibility by far was that her pieces were impeccably researched. She was thorough, ferreting out the individual truth of each word she committed to the page. If someone wanted help with their research, if someone wanted their pieces fact checked, the refrain around the dorms starting as early as second semester of freshman year was, "Go talk to Danvers."

And now, here she was. She'd had sex with her boss. A hot, powerful woman. It had been stressful, joyful, magical, anxious sex, and she wanted desperately to have it again. But she also knew that she was well out of her depth, regardless of Cat's gentle patience that one time. Cat Grant was, in general, not exactly known for her patience. Kara was a pot bubbling over with the pressure to make the next time better.

So, she decided to reach for the comfort of what she knew how to do best: research.

She was curled up in a sweatsuit at home, staring at the remote in her hand for several minutes. Alex was supposed to coming over, but not for another hour and a half. Surely she had time to do some… research.

She clicked through the cable tv menus until she found the "Adult" section. She hesitated. _Really, Kara? This is your best idea?_

 _Yep. Yep, it is._

She pushed through to the sub-menu, scrolling through a list that made her brow furrow and her nose wrinkle up: "Big Cocks" ( _weren't they all big in porn?_ ), "Interracial" ( _that was even a thing?_ ), "Gay" ( _as in men, as in, did her no good whatsoever_ ), "Anal" ( _NO. NO. Thanks, no._ ) … Halfway down the second page of selections, she found the "Lesbian" subheading. She sighed, and clicked through.

She flipped through some titles and descriptions that sounded off-putting for one reason or another, and stumbled across one that was basically her situation. Hot older lady boss, eager young secretary… She sighed. _I'm a porno. My life. It's a lesbian porno._

But she put it on and watched. She suffered through some painful dialogue. There was no Shakespeare fight. There was no conversation about Huma Abedin and Vladimir Putin. There were just two women wearing too much makeup, wearing suits that were way too tight, skirts that were way too short, killing the requisite two and a half minutes before they started … well, doing what she was here to learn about. Kara considered herself a patient person but these were probably the longest two and a half minutes she'd ever experienced, ever.

They were having sex in the boss's office. On the desk. This would never, ever happen with Cat. Kara could literally envision zero situations in which this would happen. Whatever, she could generalize. She could apply techniques across a variety of situations.

The boss had her secretary bent over the edge of the desk and was fingering her from behind, which hadn't particularly occurred to Kara, but it looked… well, it could be fun, she guessed. Conveniently, the boss also kept a vibrator in the desk drawer (did Cat? Kara doubted it.), and she took careful note of how the boss used it on her secretary, who was helpless and pliant as her boss took her half a dozen different times, half a dozen different ways.

That part left Kara feeling a little ill and uncomfortable… not the half a dozen times, that was probably pretty good, but the power dynamic made her squeamish. The secretary was just being taken and used and... She supposed power games were probably fun if everyone was on equal footing in the first place, but it struck her as she watched this thing how much Cat had gone out of her way to keep the uneven power dynamic of their work life out of the bedroom and indeed, their dating life in general. They made decisions together about where to go, what to do, what to eat, and when they'd slept together, Cat had managed to somehow strip the whole top/bottom interaction out of it entirely. Aside from a few pointers on the mechanics of things, she wasn't really sure this stupid movie was going to be much use to her at all.

Still, she was transfixed on the mechanics. She knew she could be better at that. She was watching the secretary kneeling in front of the boss's chair, eating her out, with a helpfully close-up camera angle. Aside from the fact that the boss's legs were in a sort of unnatural position to accommodate the camera, this might actually be useful stuff. She was watching with the sound low enough that she didn't have to be distracted with the moaning and the "bow-chicka-bow-bow" music (she couldn't believe it - she'd always thought that was a joke, but there it was!).

Apparently, she was so transfixed that she didn't hear the apartment door push open until Alex was already behind her. "WHOA!"

Kara jumped out of her chair and dropped the remote, which went bouncing across the floor and ended up somewhere under the couch. She tried to dive for the television itself to turn it off, but Alex jumped onto her back, laughing. "Oh, come on, Kara, I've seen porn before!"

Kara was annoyed. She didn't want to hurt Alex, but she really wanted her to get the hell off of her back so she could turn off the damn tv. "Alex, get off!"

"That's what _she's_ doing!" Alex hooted, pointing over Kara's shoulder at the television. "Come on, Kara, what's the deal? You looking for pointers to help you blow Cat Grant's mind?"

"Alex, come on!" She was trying to shake her sister off her back. "And what the hell, you're half an hour early!"

"Kara, it's no big deal. Come on, you know you can tell me anything."

Kara stopped struggling, and let Alex slip down off of her back. She was miserable and red, and sat down on the couch. "Yeah, well … I slept with her. And… Alex, it was good, it really was… I mean… she was wonderful, but… I felt like I needed to learn more. I want to be better at this… It's Cat Grant, you know?"

Alex sighed. It was clear to Kara that she wasn't entirely thrilled about this entire thing between her and Cat, for a number of reasons, beginning with power dynamics and ending with Supergirl. But she was going to be her backup anyway, because Alex knew that was the best she could do for her. "Well, I can help you, I think." She sat down at the other end of the couch.

"What are you talking about? You haven't been with women."

Kara's perplexed frown deepened as Alex took her phone out. The movie, still on low volume, continued playing in the background but neither of them were looking at it now.

"Why are you taking out your phone?" Kara demanded anxiously.

Alex hit a button and stared into her phone. "I'm gonna Facetime with someone."

"Alex, who are you calling?" The anxiety in Kara's voice pushed it up half an octave.

"Just wait," Alex waved her off.

"Alex, who?"

Alex sighed as the phone rang. "Dana, my partner my first year in the DEO. She's still working out of Nevada," Alex answered quickly.

"Why are we calling Dana in Nevada? Alex, why are we calling a stranger about my sex life?"

"Shush," Alex said again. "She's not a stranger."

The phone stopped ringing. A woman's face popped up on the phone screen, a very pretty black woman with a big, warm grin. Kara could see her clearly from the other end of the couch. "Alex! What's up, girl?"

"Dana, I'm so glad you picked up. Listen, I need you right now."

"You finally decided to switch teams for me?"

They both laughed. Kara didn't like where this conversation was going. "No," Alex chuckled, "not today, but my baby sister is, I'm with her right now, and she's watching some stuff to try and figure out what to do with her lady friend in the sack…."

"Oh my god, Alex!" Kara squeaked.

"Hi, Alex's baby sister!" Dana called through the phone.

Alex got up from the couch, marched over to the television and pointed her phone at the screen. "This is what she's watching, is this any good?" she demanded.

"Alex! I am going to kill you!" Kara hissed.

Alex waved her off again. "Shush, Kara." There was a moment of quiet as Dana presumably watched what was going on on the television.

"Yeah, you know what, Alex?" came Dana's voice through the phone. "Turn that crap off. It's made for guys so they can watch what think two women banging is supposed to look like."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Alex agreed sagely.

"What the hell do _you_ know about lesbian porn?" Kara whispered, blushing.

"Nothing specifically," Alex said flatly, "but I've watched porn before, you know, and unless it's specifically made for women, it's probably made for men."

"Preach it, girl," Dana hollered through the phone.

Kara buried her mortified face in her hands. "Alex, I'm going to kill you."

"Listen, Dana, my poor baby sister is about die over here, so just tell us… if this stuff is no good, can you recommend something better?"

Dana rattled off a list of websites with very feminine, vaguely erotic sounding names like Ashley's Box, which Alex quickly scribbled down on a cardboard coaster while Kara sat clutching her head. While she was doing this, Kara got down on hands and knees to rescue the remote from beneath the couch and turn off the television.

"OK," Alex said briskly when Dana finished dispensing recommendations for more porn than Kara could watch in a year, "Dana, you're a lifesaver. Thank you!"

"Bye, Alex's baby sister! Good luck!" Dana called. They hung up.

Kara hurled a pillow at Alex's head.

Alex ducked and tossed the cardboard coaster at her. "Peruse at your leisure. You're welcome."

Between work and her other work and rescuing things and keeping people from blowing up –or was it rescuing _people_ and keeping _things_ from blowing up?– and the occasional lunch or dinner date with Cat, Kara wasn't left with a lot of independent study time. So she took to occasionally pulling up videos on her phone while doing something mindless at work, leaving the phone carefully cradled in her lap to avoid detection.

Dana's recommendations were actually pretty good. Not that Kara had a great deal of reference for this sort of thing, but the stuff she'd suggested mostly didn't make her uncomfortable. Or rather, it was uncomfortable in so far as, she really hoped nobody caught her watching it, but it didn't give her the sick feeling that she was watching some sort of tragedy in progress. And she was actually feeling like she was picking up techniques she could use.

Because really, that was all this was about. As she sat, weeding through piles of Cat's junk mail and sending it into the shredder, that was what this was about; preparing herself, just like she would for a paper, just like she would when facing a new and difficult opponent.

"Kara, don't shred your fingers," Cat's voice interrupted her train of thought.

Damn, this was the second time this had happened. This stuff was more engrossing than she realized, she supposed, that people kept being able to sneak up on her while she was watching it. She was fairly sure that Cat couldn't see what she was looking at from where she stood. It would be mortifying for her to know that she was looking at this stuff on work time… or at all, really. She gave her a tight little smile. "It's OK, I've done this before."

"You know, I seem to recall you saying something like that when you were picking up pieces of broken glass that you had put all over my floor, and then next thing I knew, you were bleeding all over the place," Cat rejoined with a raised eyebrow.

Kara really wanted to say something about that, but how could she? _Well, okay, that happened, but I had lost my superpowers for the day, I'm fine now, this shredder couldn't hurt me if I stuck my hand right in there. What? Oh, right, yeah, I'm Supergirl, didn't I mention that? Oh, silly me._

Cat folded her arms. "Where are we with this… pile?" she inquired, gesturing at the heap of mail.

"Well," Kara answered, nervously holding up a small stack of envelopes, "I have that whole bunch to go through but the rest is done, and I've pulled out these as something that looks like it might be important."

"Okay. When and if you do find those forms from my financial advisor's office, please separate them out and leave them on my desk."

Kara nodded, hoping desperately for Cat to go away, praying she couldn't see the Advanced Cunnilingus for Desperate Girlfriends demonstration playing on the phone in her lap.

Cat turned and started to walk away. Just as Kara began to relax, though, she turned back around and stepped back to the desk. Kara's heart froze in her chest. Cat leaned down and spoke softly to her.

"And by the way, Kara," she added very quietly, "while I appreciate your… efforts to educate yourself –and I _really_ do–" She paused, letting her eyes flick briefly over Kara's body. "...If you're going to watch that stuff at work…" She paused again, and her voice became lower and silkier than it had a right to be. "...take your glasses off. I can see it reflected in the lenses."

She walked away, leaving Kara sitting in her chair with her cheeks (and some other parts) burning.


End file.
